Dental Patients Are Calmed By Acupuncture

The LA Timesis on point again! The paper recently reported on a new study about acupuncture, here it is.

Acupuncture can calm anxious dental patients, study finds

“If you’re the type who gets anxious about visiting the dentist, you might think the last thing you’d want would be a bunch of extra needles. Apparently, you’d be wrong.

A small study being published in Tuesday’s edition of the journal Acupuncture in Medicine found that dentists who administered acupuncture to their nervous patients succeeded in calming their fears. That allowed all 20 subjects to complete their necessary dental exams and treatment. Without acupuncture, only six of the patients were able to get even partial treatment.

The patients in the study initially scored an average of 26.5 on the Beck Anxiety Index (a score above 26 indicates “severe anxiety”). Five minutes after acupuncture, their average anxiety score dropped to 11.5.”